“Barca re­lates to my way of play­ing football and my iden­tity,” said Gomes.

Mascher­ano, 32, has made 247 ap­pear­ances for Barcelona since join­ing from Liver­pool in 2010, win­ning four La Liga ti­tles and two Cham­pi­ons Leagues.

Gomes is the club’s fourth sum­mer sign­ing, af­ter French de­fend­ers Sa­muel Umtiti and Lu­cas Digne joined from Lyon and Paris St-Ger­main re­spec­tively, and Denis Suarez re-signed af­ter a sea­son at Vil­lar­real.